When Webster G. Burgess asked ten of his cronies to dine with him at the
University Club on a night in January they assumed that the president of
the White River National had been indulging in another adventure which
he wished to tell them about.
In spite of their constant predictions that if he didn't stop hiding
crooks in his house and playing tricks on the Police Department he would
ultimately find himself in jail, Mr. Burgess continued to find amusement
in frequent dallyings with gentlemen of the underworld. In a town of
approximately three hundred thousand people a banker is expected to go
to church on Sundays and otherwise conduct himself as a decent, orderly,
and law-abiding citizen, but the president of the White River National
did not see things in that light. As a member of the Board of Directors
of the Released Prisoners' Aid Society he was always ready with the
excuse that his heart was deeply moved by the misfortunes of those who
keep to the dark side of the street, and that sincere philanthropy
covered all his sins in their behalf.
When his friends met at the club and found Governor Eastman one of the
dinner party, they resented the presence of that dignitary as likely to
impose restraints upon Burgess, who, for all his jauntiness, was not
wholly without discretion. But the governor was a good fellow, as they
all knew, and a story-teller of wide reputation. Moreover, he was taking
his job seriously, and, being practical men, they liked this about him.
It was said that no governor since Civil War times had spent so many
hours at his desk or had shown the same zeal and capacity for gathering
information at first hand touching all departments of the State
government. Eastman, as the country knows, is an independent character,
and it was this quality, which he had shown first as a prosecuting
attorney, that had attracted attention and landed him in the seat of the
Hoosier governors.
"I suppose," remarked Kemp as they sat down, "that these tablets are
scattered around the table so we can make notes of the clever things
that will be said here tonight. It's a good idea and gives me a chance
to steal some of your stories, governor."
A scratch pad with pencil attached had been placed at each plate, and
the diners spent several minutes in chaffing Burgess as to the purpose
of this unusual table decoration.
"I guess," said Goring, "that Web is going to ask us to write limericks
for a prize and that the governor is here to judge the contest. Indoor
winter sports don't appeal to me; I pass."
"I'm going to write notes to the House Committee on mine," said Fanning;
"the food in this club is not what it used to be, and it's about time
somebody kicked."
"As I've frequently told you," remarked Burgess, smiling upon them from
the head of the table, "you fellows have no imagination. You'd never
guess what those tablets are for, and maybe I'll never tell you."
"Nothing is so innocent as a piece of white paper," said the governor,
eyeing his tablet. "We'd better be careful not to jot down anything that
might fly up and hit us afterward. For all we know, it may be a scheme
to get our signatures for Burgess to stick on notes without relief from
valuation or appraisement laws. It's about time for another Bohemian
oats swindle, and our friend Burgess may expect to work us for the price
of the dinner."
"Web's bound to go to jail some day," remarked Ramsay, the surgeon, "and
he'd better do it while you're in office, governor. You may not know
that he's hand in glove with all the criminals in the country: he quit
poker so he could give all his time to playing with crooks."
"The warden of the penitentiary has warned me against him," replied the
governor easily. "Burgess has a man at the gate to meet convicts as they
emerge, and all the really bad ones are sent down here for Burgess to
put up at this club."
"I never did that but once," Burgess protested, "and that was only
because my mother-in-law was visiting me and I was afraid she wouldn't
stand for a burglar as a fellow guest. My wife's got used to 'em. But
the joke of putting that chap up here at the club isn't on me, but on
Ramsay and Colton. They had luncheon with him one day and thanked me
afterward for introducing them to so interesting a man. I told them he
was a manufacturer from St. Louis, and they swallowed it whole. Pettit
was the name, but he has string of aliases as long as this table, and
there's not a rogues' gallery in the country where he isn't indexed. You
remember, Colton, he talked a good deal of his travels, and he could do
so honestly, as he'd cracked safes all the way from Boston to Seattle."
Ramsay and Colton protested that this could not be so; that the man they
had luncheon with was a shoe manufacturer and had talked of his business
as only an expert could.
The governor and Burgess exchanged glances, and both laughed.
"He knew the shoe business all right enough," said Burgess, "for he
learned it in the penitentiary and proved so efficient that they made
him foreman of the shop!"
"I suppose," said Kemp, "that you've got another crook coming to take
that vacant chair. You'd better tell us about him so we won't commit any
social errors."
At the governor's right there was an empty place, and Burgess remarked
carelessly that they were shy a man, but that he would turn up later.
"I've asked Tate, a banker at Lorinsburg, to join us and he'll be along
after a while. Any of you know Tate? One of our scouts recently
persuaded him to transfer his account to us, and as this is the first
time he's been in town since the change I thought it only decent to show
him some attention. We're both directors in a company that's trying to
develop a tile factory in his town, so you needn't be afraid I'm going
to put anything over on you. Tate's attending a meeting tonight from
which I am regrettably absent! He promised to be here before we got down
to the coffee."
As the dinner progressed the governor was encouraged to tell stories,
and acceded good-naturedly by recounting some amusing things that had
happened in the course of his official duties.
"But it isn't all so funny," he said gravely after keeping them in a
roar for half an hour. "In a State as big as this a good many
disagreeable things happen, and people come to me every day with
heartbreaking stories. There's nothing that causes me more anxiety than
the appeals for pardon; if the pardoning power were taken away from me,
I'd be a much happier man. The Board of Pardons winnows out the cases,
but even at that there's enough to keep me uncomfortable. It isn't the
pleasantest feeling in the world that as you go to bed at night somebody
may be suffering punishment unjustly, and that it's up to you to find it
out. When a woman comes in backed by a child or two and cries all over
your office about her husband who's doing time and tells you he wasn't
guilty, it doesn't cheer you much; not by a jugful! Wives, mothers, and
sisters: the wives shed more tears, the sisters put up the best
argument, but the mothers give you more sleepless nights."
"If it were up to me," commented Burgess, "I'm afraid I'd turn 'em all
out!"
"You would," chorused the table derisively, "and when you'd emptied the
penitentiaries you'd burn 'em down!"
"Of course there's bound to be cases of flagrant injustice," suggested
Kemp. "And the feelings of a man who is locked up for a crime he never
committed must be horrible. We hear now and then of such cases and it
always shakes my faith in the law."
"The law does the best it can," replied the governor a little
defensively, "but, as you say, mistakes do occur. The old saying that
murder will out is no good; we can all remember cases where the truth
was never known. Mistakes occur constantly, and it's the fear of not
rectifying them that's making a nervous wreck of me. I have in my pocket
now a blank pardon that I meant to sign before I left my office, but I
couldn't quite bring myself to the point. The Pardon Board has made the
recommendation, not on the grounds of injustice--more, I'm afraid, out
of sympathy than anything else--and we have to be careful of our
sympathies in these matters. And here again there's a wife to reckon
with. She's been at my office nearly every day for a year, and she's
gone to my wife repeatedly to enlist her support. And it's largely
through Mrs. Eastman's insistence that I've spent many weeks studying
the case. It's a murder: what appeared to be a heartless, cold-blooded
assassination. And some of you may recall it--the Avery case, seven
years ago, in Salem County."
Half the men had never heard of it and the others recalled it only
vaguely.
"It was an interesting case," Burgess remarked, wishing to draw the
governor out. "George Avery was a man of some importance down there and
stood high in the community. He owned a quarry almost eleven miles from
Torrenceville and maintained a bungalow on the quarry land where he used
to entertain his friends with quail-hunting and perhaps now and then
with a poker party. He killed a man named Reynolds who was his guest. As
I remember, there seemed to be no great mystery about it, and Avery's
defense was a mere disavowal and a brilliant flourish of character
witnesses."
"For all anybody ever knew, it was a plain case, as Burgess says," the
governor began. "Avery and Reynolds were business acquaintances and
Avery had invited Reynolds down there to discuss the merging of their
quarry interests. Reynolds was found dead a little way from the bungalow
by some of the quarry laborers. He had been beaten on the head with a
club in the most barbarous fashion. Reynolds's overcoat was torn off and
the buttons ripped from his waistcoat, pointing to a fierce struggle
before his assailant got him down and pounded the life out of him. The
purpose was clearly not robbery, as Reynolds had a considerable sum of
money on his person that was left untouched. When the men who found the
body went to rouse Avery he collapsed when told that Reynolds was dead.
In fact, he lay in a stupor for a week, and they could get nothing out
of him. Tracks? No; it was a cold December night and the ground was
frozen.
"Reynolds had meant to take a midnight train for Chicago, and Avery had
wired for special orders to stop at the quarry station, to save Reynolds
the trouble of driving into Torrenceville. One might have supposed that
Avery would accompany his visitor to the station, particularly as it was
not a regular stop for night trains and the way across the fields was a
little rough. I've personally been over all the ground. There are many
difficult and inexplicable things about the case, the absence of motive
being one of them. The State asserted business jealousy and
substantiated it to a certain extent, and the fact that Avery had taken
the initiative in the matter of combining their quarry interests and
might have used undue pressure on Reynolds to force him to the deal to
be considered."
The governor lapsed into silence, seemingly lost in reverie. With his
right hand he was scribbling idly on the tablet that lay by his plate.
The others, having settled themselves comfortably in their chairs,
hoping to hear more of the murder, were disappointed when he ceased
speaking. Burgess's usual calm, assured air deserted him. He seemed
unwontedly restless, and they saw him glance furtively at his watch.
"Please, governor, won't you go on with the story?" pleaded Colton. "You
know that nothing that's said at one of Web's parties ever goes out of
the room."
"That," laughed the governor, "is probably unfortunate, as most of his
stories ought to go to the grand jury. But if I may talk here into the
private ear of you gentlemen I will go on a little further. I've got to
make up my mind, in the next hour or two about this case, and it may
help me to reach a conclusion to think aloud about it."
"You needn't be afraid of us," said Burgess encouragingly. "We've been
meeting here--about the same crowd--once a month for five years, and
nobody has ever blabbed anything."
"All right; we'll go a bit further. Avery's stubborn silence was a
contributing factor in his prompt conviction. A college graduate, a
high-strung, nervous man, hard-working and tremendously ambitious;
successful, reasonably prosperous, happy in his marriage, and with every
reason for living straight: there you have George Avery as I make him
out to have been when this calamity befell him. There was just one
lapse, one error, in his life, but that didn't figure in the case, and I
won't speak of it now. His conduct from the moment of his arrest, a week
following the murder, and only after every other possible clue had been
exhausted by the local authorities, was that of a man mutely resigned to
his fate. I find from the records that he remained at the bungalow in
care of a physician, utterly dazed, it seemed, by the thing he had done,
until a warrant was issued and he was put in jail. He's been a prisoner
ever since, and his silence has been unbroken to this day. His wife
assures me that he never, not even to her, said one word about the case
more than to declare his innocence. I've seen him at the penitentiary on
two occasions, but could get nothing out of him. In fact, I exhausted
any ingenuity I may have in attempting to surprise him into some
admission that would give me ground for pardoning him, but without
learning anything that was not in the State's case. They're using him as
a bookkeeper, and he's made a fine record: a model convict. The long
confinement has told seriously on his health, which is the burden of his
wife's plea for his release, but he wouldn't even discuss that.
"There was no one else at the bungalow on the night of the murder," the
governor continued. "It was Avery's habit to get his meals at the house
of the quarry superintendent, about five hundred yards away, and the
superintendent's wife cared for the bungalow, but the men I've had at
work couldn't find anything in that to hang a clue on. You see,
gentlemen, after seven years it's not easy to work up a case, but two
expert detectives that I employed privately to make some investigations
along lines I suggested have been of great assistance. Failing to catch
the scent where the trail started, I set them to work backward from a
point utterly remote from the scene. It was a guess, and ordinarily it
would have failed, but in this case it has brought results that are all
but convincing."
The tablets and pencils that had been distributed along the table had
not been neglected. The guests, without exception, had been drawing or
scribbling; Colton had amused himself by sketching the governor's
profile. Burgess seemed not to be giving his undivided attention to the
governor's review of the case. He continued to fidget, and his eyes
swept the table with veiled amusement. Then he tapped a bell and a
waiter appeared.
"Pardon me a moment, governor, till the cigars are passed again."
In his round with the cigar tray the Jap, evidently by prearrangement,
collected the tablets and laid them in front of Burgess.
"Changed your mind about the limerick contest, Web?" asked someone.
"Not at all," said Burgess carelessly; "the tablets have fulfilled their
purpose. It was only a silly idea of mine anyhow." They noticed,
however, that a tablet was left at the still vacant place that awaited
the belated guest, and they wondered at this, surmising that Burgess had
planned the dinner carefully and that the governor's discussion of the
Avery case was by connivance with their host. With a quickening of
interest they drew their chairs closer to the table.
"The prosecuting attorney who represented the State in the trial is now
a judge of the Circuit Court," the governor resumed when the door closed
upon the waiter. "I have had many talks with him about this case. He
confesses that there are things about it that still puzzle him. The
evidence was purely circumstantial, as I have already indicated; but
circumstantial evidence, as Thoreau once remarked, may be very
convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk! But when two men have
spent a day together in the house of one of them, and the other is found
dead in a lonely place not far away, and suspicion attaches to no one
but the survivor--not even the tramp who usually figures in such
speculations--a jury of twelve farmers may be pardoned for taking the
State's view of the matter."
"The motive you spoke of, business jealousy, doesn't seem quite adequate
unless it could be established that they had quarreled and that there
was a clear showing of enmity," suggested Fullerton, the lawyer.
"You are quite right, and the man who prosecuted Avery admits it," the
governor answered.
"There may have been a third man in the affair," suggested Ramsay, "and
I suppose the cynical must have suggested the usual woman in the case."
"I dare say those possibilities were thrashed out at the time," the
governor replied; "but the only woman in this case is Avery's wife, and
she and Reynolds had never met. I have found nothing to sustain any
suspicion that there was a woman in the case. Avery's ostensible purpose
in asking Reynolds to visit him at that out-of-the-way place was merely
that they could discuss the combination of their quarry interests
privately, and close to Avery's plant. It seems that Avery had
undertaken the organization of a big company to take over a number of
quarries whose product was similar, and that he wished to confer
secretly with Reynolds to secure his sanction to a selling agreement
before the others he wanted to get into the combination heard of it.
That, of course, is perfectly plausible; I could make a good argument
justifying that. Reynolds, like many small capitalists in country towns,
had a number of irons in the fire and had done some promoting on his own
hook. All the financial genius and all the financial crookedness aren't
confined to Wall Street, though I forget that sometimes when I'm on the
stump! I'm disposed to think from what I've learned of both of them that
Avery wasn't likely to put anything over on Reynolds, who was no child
in business matters. And there was nothing to show that Avery had got
him down there for any other purpose than to effect a merger of quarry
interests for their mutual benefit."
"There probably were papers to substantiate that," suggested Fullerton;
"correspondence and that sort of thing."
"Certainly; I have gone into that," the governor replied. "All the
papers remain in the office of the prosecuting attorney, and I have
examined them carefully. Now, if Avery had been able to throw suspicion
on some one else you'd think he'd have done so. And if there had been a
third person at the bungalow that night you'd imagine that Avery would
have said so; it's not in human nature for one man to take the blame for
another's crime, and yet we do hear of such things, and I have read
novels and seen plays built upon that idea. But here is Avery with
fifteen years more to serve, and, if he's been bearing the burden and
suffering the penalty of another's, sin, I must say that he's taking it
all in an amazing spirit of self-sacrifice."
"Of course," said Fullerton, "Reynolds may have had an enemy who
followed him there and lay in wait for him. Or Avery may have connived
at the crime without being really the assailant. That is conceivable."
"We'll change the subject for a moment," said the governor, "and return
to our muttons later."
He spoke in a low tone to Burgess, who looked at his watch and answered
audibly:
"We have half an hour more."
The governor nodded and, with a whimsical smile, began turning over the
tablets.
"These pads were placed before you for a purpose which I will now
explain. I apologize, for taking advantage of you, but you will pardon
me, I'm sure, when I tell you my reason. I've dipped into psychology
lately with a view to learning something of the mind's eccentricities.
We all do things constantly without conscious effort, as you know; we
perform acts automatically without the slightest idea that we are doing
them. At meetings of our State boards I've noticed that nobody ever uses
the pads that are always provided except to scribble on. Many people
have that habit of scribbling on anything that's handy. Hotel keepers,
knowing this, provide pads of paper ostensibly for memoranda that guests
may want to make while at the telephone, but really to keep them from
defacing the wall. Left alone with pencil and paper, most of us will
scribble something or draw meaningless figures.
"Sometimes it's indicative of a deliberate turn of mind; again it's
sheer nervousness. After I had discussed this with a well-known
psychologist I began watching myself and found that I made a succession
of figure eights looped together in a certain way--I've been doing it
here!
"And now," he went on with a chuckle, "you gentlemen have been indulging
this same propensity as you listened to me. I find on one pad the word
Napoleon written twenty times with a lot of flourishes; another has
traced a dozen profiles of a man with a bulbous nose: it is the same
gentleman, I find, who honored me by drawing me with a triple chin--for
which I thank him. And here's what looks like a dog kennel repeated down
the sheet. Still another has sketched the American flag all over the
page. If the patriotic gentleman who drew the flag will make himself
known, I should like to ask him whether he's conscious of having done
that before?"
"I'm guilty, governor," Fullerton responded. "I believe it is a habit of
mine. I've caught myself doing it scores of times."
"I'm responsible for the man with the fat nose," confessed Colton; "I've
been drawing him for years without ever improving my draftsmanship."
"That will do," said the governor, glancing at the door. "We won't take
time to speak of the others, though you may be relieved to know that I
haven't got any evidence against you. Burgess, please get these works of
art out of the room. We'll go back to the Avery case. In going over the
papers I found that the prosecuting attorney in his search of the
bungalow the morning after the murder found a number of pieces of paper
that bore an odd, irregular sort of sketch. I'm going to pass one of
them round, but please send it back to me immediately."
He produced a sheet of letter paper that bore traces of hasty crumpling
but had been smoothed out again, and held it up. It bore the
lithographed name of the Avery Quarry Company. On it was drawn this
device:
[Illustration]
"Please note," said the governor as the paper passed from hand to hand,
"that same device is traced there five times, sometimes more irregularly
than others, but the general form is the same. Now, in the fireplace of
the bungalow living-room they found this and three other sheets of the
same stationery that bore this same figure. It seems a fair assumption
that someone sitting at a table had amused himself by sketching these
outlines and then, when he had filled the sheet, tore it off and threw
it into the fireplace, wholly unconscious of what he was doing. The
prosecutor attached no importance to these sheets, and it was only by
chance that they were stuck away in the file box with the other
documents in the case."
"Then you suspect that there was a third man in the bungalow that
night?" Ramsay asked.
The governor nodded gravely.
"Yes; I have some little proof of it, quite a bit of proof, in fact. I
have even had the wastebasket of the suspect examined for a considerable
period. Knowing Burgess's interest in such matters, I have been using
him to get me certain information I very much wanted. And our friend is
a very successful person! I wanted to see the man I have in mind and
study him a little when he was off-guard, and Burgess has arranged that
for me, though he had to go into the tile business to do it! As you can
readily see, I could hardly drag him to my office, so this little party
was gotten up to give me a chance to look him over at leisure."
"Tate!" exclaimed several of the men.
"You can see that this is a very delicate matter," said the governor
slowly. "Burgess thought it better not to have a smaller party, as Tate,
whom I never saw, might think it a frame-up. So you see we are using you
as stool-pigeons, so to speak. Burgess vouches for you as men of
discretion and tact; and it will be your business to keep Tate amused
and his attention away from me while I observe him a little."
"And when I give the signal you're to go into the library and look at
picture books," Burgess added.
"That's not fair!" said Fullerton. "We want to see the end of it!"
"I'm so nervous," said Colton, "I'm likely to scream at any minute!"
"Don't do it!" Burgess admonished. "The new House Committee is very
touchy about noise in the private dining-rooms, and besides I've got a
lot of scenery set for the rest of the evening, and I don't want you
fellows to spoil it."
"It begins to look," remarked the governor, glancing at his watch, "as
though some of our scenery might have got lost."
"He'd hardly bolt," Burgess replied; "he knows of no reason why he
should! I told the doorman to send him right up. When he comes there
will be no more references to the Avery case: you all understand?"
They murmured their acquiescence, and a solemn hush fell upon them as
they turned involuntarily toward the vacant chair.
"This will never do!" exclaimed the governor, who seemed to be the one
tranquil person in the room. "We must be telling stories and giving an
imitation of weary business men having a jolly time. But I'm tired of
talking; some of the good story-tellers ought to be stirred up."
With a little prodding Fullerton took the lead, but was able to win only
grudging laughter. Colton was trying his hand at diverting them when
they were startled by a knock. Burgess was at the door instantly and
flung it open.